Racial slurs and explicit lyrics found on ‘clean’ tracks in Spotify

SPOTIFY shows racial slurs and explicit song lyrics on “clean” versions of tracks, it has been revealed.

The streaming service, which has more than 551 million monthly active users worldwide, includes a function that flashes up lyrics onscreen while a user is listening to a song.

An investigation by the BBC found that when listening to a version without expletives, uncensored lyrics were shown. It found this occurred even when a safety filter was turned on.

It comes after the company introduced a filter system designed to deal with explicit and sexual content in 2018 after facing pressure from parents.

All explicit songs on the platform are marked with an “E” and anyone who wants to avoid swearing and sexual references in music can choose to block the marked content in their settings, with clean versions being offered instead.

But radio friendly versions of some hits from stars like Drake, Dua Lipa and

Olivia Rodrigo were shown to have the explicit words in Spotify’s song lyrics feature. This is because lyrics in their database for many of these edited versions can be the same as the originals.

After being alerted to the problem by the BBC on Wednesday, the streaming service appeared to remove the lyrics to a number of songs that included swear words and other explicit content.

The Telegraph understands the company is aware of the problem and actively working to fix it.

On its website, Spotify states that it includes explicit content on its platform “because we offer it how the artist intends it to be heard”.

The company includes a note to explain that it is unable to tag all inappropriate content because it is dependent on the information it receives from rights-holders.

Unlike the film industry, music content does not have an age rating system to highlight explicit content to parents. Currently, 19 songs in UK top 50 chart are marked with an explicit content rating. Of those, the BBC found that half showed the inappropriate lyrics on screen when the clean edit was played.